West Gresham

Greetings,

Well, all I can say is that the campus is not gracefully moving into the 21st century but the good news is, it is happening rather it likes it or not.

So far we have been through a flood, a major power outage, and are at four and counting "surprise" water pipe mishaps; we have found three buried tanks (one a 5,000 gallon oil tank,) an oil pit, and a fire pit; cut one alarm phone line, discovered and investigated no less than 5 "mysterious" buried pipes of different varieties, had a fire meter removed instead of a domestic water meter, decommissioned an 800' well, and wrestled with numerous HUGE boulders; freed three spirits, found two fairies, and a couple of interesting artifacts since we began construction first of last year.

But in spite of it all, we keep moving forward. On Monday (Apr 20, 2015) we will be taking one more visible stride toward progress as we begin paving the new Tucker parking lot. Plus if you haven't checked out the Louise Building lately take a quick look, the addition is framed in and we are starting work on the new green roof. We are currently dry walling the inside of the historic building and will be pouring the new front entry here next week. The windows have started to be returned and with the nice weather here we will be painting the exterior in earnest.

A heads up, once the Tucker lot gets paved we will be moving ALL front of campus parking to that lot so that we can get the Chapel and School lot completed. Then we will be moving our attention to the big lot at the back of the Chapel.

I also have to apologize for the length of the power outage to the red shed. PGE is expected end of next week to get our new power run to the new transformer and then we can get power back to the Louise and the shed. A huge thanks for everyone's patience on that one.

I know everybody is anxious to know when we are going to be done and I wish I had a confident answer but I don't. The best I can say is at this point, everyone is dedicated to getting done as quickly as is humanly possible and with all the progress we are making I do expect us to be done early July. The surest sign I have of this is that I am actually starting to turn my attention toward furnishing the new building and in my world that is as good as sign as any that we are headed toward the finish line.

Still have a ways to go and not sure what the site will throw at us next but we should be down to a few months and the majority of the mess and my throbbing headaches will be over. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.

If you have any questions, concerns, issues, or etc. please don't hesitate to give me a call.

Pam Krecklow
Albertina Kerr

Greetings,

I apologize that it has been a bit since I have touched base, been just a little busy. Have some great news though. We passed our final inspection (March 6, 2015) on the seismic work on the Louise Building. This work insures the building will be around for generations to come. We now move our focus to getting the old building ready for occupancy and getting the new addition up and running. We have new footings for the new foundation poured and are pouring the new foundation stem walls as I am typing. As always just one step at a time.

You no doubt have all noticed the work on the campus grounds, pretty hard not to notice it. But if you have been wondering, yes we are in full swing in regards to getting the new parking lots in place. The big holes in the two pasture areas are actually going to be bio swells. Since we are creating a lot of surface parking area City code requires us to provide areas with which to filter and mitigate storm water runoff and the bio swells do that. Don’t worry they aren’t as big as they appear right this minute, they will get smaller. Just have to remove more dirt than necessary to give the contractors room to work. They will be taking shape here in the next couple of weeks.

As for parking I know it is tight right this moment and it is going to get worse before it gets better, but we need to remember it is going to get better. When we are done we will have right at 200 formal parking spaces on Campus, YEAH! But until then it will remain interesting. Parking remains available in front of and in back of the Chapel, in the new Sub acute lot, and around the CI building. With parking being so tight I do need to ask every to be careful as people are walking around campus and also please remember to park courteously. Don’t take up two parking spaces but also please don’t park so close that someone can’t get into or out of their vehicle. Plus we need to make sure that circulation remain open to the Multnomah CI Building. This one is going to take us all to get through, so be ready.

As we get the new parking lots up and running we will be shifting parking to the new lots so that the front and back of Chapel lots can get created. As soon as I know when that is happening I will pass it along so we can get the transition to run as smoothly as is possible. In the meantime keep enjoying the weather.

If you have any questions, concerns, issues, or etc. please don't hesitate to give me a call.

Pam Krecklow
Albertina Kerr